An Esoteric Cosmology

Schmidt Number: S-1342

On-line since: 15th January, 2001

XVII

REDEMPTION AND LIBERATION

There are seven mysteries of life which up till now have never been
spoken of outside the ranks of Occult Brotherhoods. Only in our age is
it possible to speak of them openly. They have been called the seven
‘inexpressible’ or ‘unutterable’ mysteries. We
shall attempt to deal with the fourth mystery, that of Death. These
mysteries are as follows:

The mystery of the Abyss.

The mystery of Number (which can be studied in Pythagorean philosophy).

The mystery of Alchemy. (We can learn something of this mystery in the works of Paracelsus and Jacob Boehme).

The mystery of Death.

The mystery of Evil (to which reference is made in the Apocalypse).

The mystery of the Word, of the Logos.

The mystery of Divine Bliss. (This mystery is the most occult).

In speaking of the planetary body which preceded our Earth — the
Old Moon phase of evolution — we distinguished three kingdoms of
Nature, very different from those we know. Our mineral kingdom did not
then exist. It came into being as the result of condensation and
crystallisation of what on the Old Moon was half-mineral, half-plant.
Our plant-world has sprung from the lunar plant-animal. Similarly, the
animal world has arisen from the lunar animal-man. So we see that on
the Earth, each of these lunar kingdoms makes a descent into
materiality. The same thing happens to the Beings who on the Old Moon
were higher than animal-man: the Spirits of Fire. In that period man
breathed fire, just as today we breathe air. This is why the legends
and myths speak of fire as the primary manifestation of the Gods.
Goethe
alludes to this in Faust, in the words: “Let us
kindle fire in order that the Spirits may clothe themselves as in a
garment.” These Fire-Spirits of the ancient Moon descended to the
air in the Earth period proper. They too have descended into
denser materiality, into the air we inbreathe and outbreathe.

Now it is just because these Spirits have descended into the air that
man can, by their help, rise to the Divine. A twofold movement
occurred in the innermost nature of the beings dwelling in the Old
Moon. Animal-man divided into two groups. In the one group, a brain
developed under the influence of the inspiration and action of the
Spirits of Fire who became Spirits of Air. The other group descended
towards the animal kingdom. This division is now apparent in the very
constitution of man, for the lower part of his being is more akin to
the animal, while the higher rises towards the Spirit. According to
whether the one or the other characteristic was more or less
pronounced, two groups of human beings came into existence: the one
bound by a lower nature to the Earth — the other more developed and free
of the Earth. The first group grew more like the animals. The beings
of the other group received the Divine Spark, the consciousness of
‘I.’ Such is the relation between man of today and the
animals, more particularly the ape.

The physical correlate of this spiritual evolution was the growth and
development of the human brain into a veritable temple of God. But if
this had been the only evolution, something would have been lacking.
There would have been minerals, plants, animals and human beings
possessing a brain and a human form and figure, but something would
have remained at the lunar stage of evolution. On the Old Moon there
was neither birth nor death.

Try to conceive of man without a physical body. He would not pass
through death; the renewal of his being would not be brought about by
birth as we know it, but by some other means. Certain parts of the
astral body and the etheric body would be subject to change, that is
all. Around an imperishable centre, the surrounding sheaths alone
would be the media of communication with the environment, — such
was the condition of man during the Old Moon period of evolution; his
being was subject to metamorphoses, not to birth or death. But in this
state he had no consciousness in our sense of the word. The Gods who
had given him form were around him, behind him, not within him. They
were to him what the tree is to the branch or what the brain is to the
hand. The hand moves, but the consciousness of the movement is in the
brain. Man was a branch of the divine tree and if earthly evolution
had not changed this condition of things, his brain would have been
but a flower of the same divine tree, his thoughts would have been
reflected in his countenance as in a mirror but he would have had no
consciousness of his own thoughts. Our Earth would have been a world
of beings endowed with thoughts, but not with consciousness, a world
of statues ensouled by the Gods, above all by Jahve or Jehovah. What
was it that changed this order of things and how has man arrived at
independence?

The Gods of the nature of Jahve were able to descend into the human
brain. But other Spirits who, on the Moon, had been of the order of
the Spirits of Fire, had not completed their evolution, and instead of
penetrating into the brain of man on the Earth they mingled with his
astral body. The astral body is composed of instincts, desires,
passions, and it was there that those Spirits of Fire who had not
attained the goal of evolution on the Moon, took refuge. They found a
home in the animal nature of man where the passions unfold, and at the
same time they imbued these passions with higher qualities. They
poured the capacity for higher enthusiasm into the blood and
the astral body of man. The gift of the Jehovistic Gods was the pure,
cold form of the idea; but under the influence of these Spirits
— we may speak of them as Luciferian Spirits — man became
capable of enthusiasm for ideas, of being passionately for them or
against them. The Jehovistic Gods gave form and shape to the human
brain; the Luciferian Spirits set up the connection between the brain
and the physical senses; they live in the nerve branches which end in
the sense-organs. Lucifer has lived in us for as long as Jehovah.

The fact that his senses give man an objective consciousness of the
world around him is due to the Luciferian Spirits. Human thought is
the gift of the Gods; human consciousness is the gift of
Lucifer. Lucifer lives in the astral body of man, and Lucifer's
activity comes to expression at the point where the nerves give rise
to feeling and perception. That is why the Serpent in Genesis
says: ‘Your eyes shall be opened.’ These words must be taken
literally, for it was by the Luciferian Spirits that the senses of man
were opened.

The individualisation of consciousness is due to the senses. If man's
thoughts were not related to the sense-world they would simply be
reflections of the Divine — not knowledge but belief. The contradiction
between faith and science is due to this dual origin of human thought.
Faith turns to the eternal Ideas, the ‘Mother-Ideas’ lying
in the bosom of the Gods. All science, all knowledge of the outer
world by means of the senses owes its existence to the Luciferian
Spirits. In man, the Luciferian principle and Divine Intelligence are
combined. It is this fusion of opposing principles which makes evil
possible for man but it also gives him the power of
self-consciousness, choice and freedom. Only a being capable of
individualisation could be thus helped by opposing elements within his
being. If when he descended into matter, man had only received the
form given by Jehovah, he would have remained an impersonal
being. And so it was due to Lucifer that man was able to become truly
man, a being independent of the Gods. Christ, or the Logos made
manifest in man, is the Principle which enables him to ascend once
again to God.

Before the Coming of Christ, man embodied the principle of Jehovah
(form) and that of Lucifer (individualisation). He was divided between
obedience to the Law and the revolt of the principle of individuality.
But the principle of Christ came to establish equilibrium between the
two. Christ taught man how to find the Law which was originally laid
down from outside, within the centre of individual being. This is what
St. Paul meant when he said that freedom and love are the highest
principles of Christianity. The ancient world was ruled by Law; Love
is the governing principle of the new order of things. Thus three
principles are inseparable from and essential to man's evolution
— Jehovah, Lucifer, Christ. Christ Jesus is not only a Universal
Principle; Christ is a Being who appeared once, and once only, at a
definite moment in history. In human form, He revealed by His words
and His life, a state of perfection which it is possible for all men
ultimately to acquire by their own free-will. Christ came to the Earth
at a critical moment, when the descending arc of human evolution was
about to reach its lowest point of materialisation. In order that the
Christ-Principle might awaken in man, the life of Christ Himself on
Earth was necessary in a human body.

Karma is the law of cause and effect in the spiritual world; it
represents the spiral process of evolution. The Christ Impulse
intervenes in this karmic process and becomes its central pivot. Since
He came to Earth the Christ has lived in the depths of every human
soul.

When karma is conceived as a necessity imposed on man in order that
his wrong doings may be redressed and his errors redeemed by an
implacable justice working over from one incarnation to another, the
objection is sometimes raised that karma must do away with the rôle of
Christ as the Redeemer. In reality, karma is a redemption of man by
himself, by dint of his own efforts as he gradually ascends to
freedom through the series of incarnations. It is through karma that
man is able to draw near to Christ.

The Christ-Impulse transforms implacable Law into Freedom, and the
source of this Impulse is the person and example of Christ Jesus.
Karma is not to be conceived as fatalism but as an instrument
essential to the attainment of that supreme freedom which is life in
Christ — a freedom attained not by defying the world-order but by
fulfilling it.

Another objection is one that may be made from the point of view of
oriental philosophy. It is said that the idea of a Redeemer of men
does away with the logical concatenations of karma and substitutes for
it an act of a miraculous Providence which intervenes in the universal
laws of evolution. It is surely right and just that those who have
committed sins should bear the weight of them. This is an error of
thought. Karma is the law of cause and effect in the spiritual
world, just as mechanical action is the law of cause and effect in the
material world. At every moment of life karma represents something
like a balance sheet, an exact statement of debit and credit. By every
action, bad or good, man augments his debit or credit. Those who will
not admit the possibility of an act of freedom are like a business man
who will not venture to embark upon a new transaction because he does
not wish to run any risk; he prefers always to keep the same balance
sheet.

A purely logical conception of karma would prohibit one from helping a
man in adversity. But there, too, such fatalism would be false. The
help we give freely to another opens up a new era in his destiny. Our
destinies are woven of these impulses, of these acts of grace. If we
accept the idea of individual help, may we not conceive that a far
mightier Being could help, not one man alone, but all men, could give
a new impulse to all humanity? Such, indeed, was the act of a God Who
was made man, not in order to defy the laws of karma but to fulfil
them. Karma and Christ — the means of salvation and the Saviour.
Through karma, the Act of Christ becomes cosmic law, and through the
Christ-Principle karma achieves its aim — the liberation of
conscious souls and their identification with God. Karma is gradual
redemption, Christ is the Redeemer.

If men would steep themselves in these ideas, they would realise that
they belong to one another; they would understand the law recognised
in all true occult brotherhoods — namely that each individual
suffers and lives for others. There will come a time in the future
when outer redemption will coincide in each man with the interior act
of the Redeemer. It is not revelation but truth which makes men free:
“You shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you
free.”

The path of evolution leads to freedom. When man has awakened in
himself all those qualities which were prophetically manifest in the
Christ, he will be a free being. For if necessity is the law of the
material world, freedom is the law of the spiritual world. Freedom is
only acquired step by step and it will not be fully manifest in man
until the end of his evolution, when his nature will be truly
spiritualised.